of the N.E. trade winds on the northern side of the equator, 

 being sucked in northwards, or even N.W.-wards, towards 

 the heated deserts of Asia. The S.E. trade winds, no longer 

 kept at bay bj a belt of a neutral calm, seize the opportunity 

 of crossing the line. Those N.E. trade winds, being already 

 drawn to the heated land, have taken a southerly direction, 

 and the S.E. trades on the S. side of the Equator, and which 

 have now crossed the Equator, and are at the same time 

 losing gradually their easterly character in consequence 

 of the diminished effect of the different diurnal 

 motion of the earth, unchecked by any belt of 

 calm, and meeting with less resistance, are drawn into the 

 general conflict. It has been assumed that (I quote from 

 memory) " there are, on the polar side of the S.E. trade 

 winds, no great plains, except in Australia, upon which the 

 rays of the sun in the summer can play with force enough to 

 rarefy the air sufficiently to materially interrupt these winds 

 in their course," i.e., to make a monsoon of them. This may 

 be true, but the cyclones experienced at the Mauritius are, I 

 imagine, close to the conflict between the trade wind force 

 and the force which impels the air towards the over^heated 

 deserts of Australia. Australia is small, compared with 

 Asia, but if the smallest coral island interferes, as we know 

 it does, with the course of a prevailing wind it would be 

 absurd to doubt the powerful effect which a large continent 

 like Australia, a portion of which lies within the tropical 

 regions, must exercise beyond the usual currents of wind, 

 whether they be the south or the S.E. trade winds, on the 

 polar edges of which the Mauritius stands on (or on a 

 smaller scale), producing a contest between our own steady 

 western trade winds and the indraft produced by the heated 

 continent of Australia in summer. 



A great Dutch authority, Jansen, says that " in the South 

 Pacific, and in the South Atlantic, so far as I know, rotatory 

 storms are never known — these seas have no monsoons." I 

 think this statement is not borne out by the short account 

 with which Capt, Chandler has favoured me. We are 

 happily free from those hurricanes Viith. which the E. Indies 

 and the Mauritius are familiar, and which are, in spite of 

 their terribleness, blessings of compensation, and of which 

 we ourselves stand in less need, but I am disposed to think 

 that the same laws in the same economy of nature has 

 produced rotatory storms, which, though unconnected with 

 local monsoons blessing the land, should not be ignored by 

 our shipowners, and the captains of our mercantile marine. 

 As the presence of land, which is the proper home of man, 

 is the chief ultimate cause of storms, we look for far greater 

 calmness in the Southern Hemisphere, from the relative 



